All owners, the entire bourgeoisie, strives to draw the middle peasant to its side by promising him all manner of measures to improve his farm (cheap plows, rural banks, the introduction of grass seed cultivation, cheap sale of livestock and fertilizers, and the like), and also by making the peasant a participant in all manner of agricultural associations (cooperatives, as they are called in books)—associations among all sorts of proprietors for the purpose of improving their farms. In this way, the bourgeoisie strives to draw away from alliance with the workers the middle peasant and even the petty peasant, even the semi-proletarian, strives to compel them to stand for the rich, for the bourgeoisie, in its struggle against the workers, against the proletariat.

The workers and social-democrats answer to this as follows: improvement of farming is a good thing. There is nothing wrong with buying plows more cheaply; even now every sensible merchant tries to sell more cheaply in order to attract customers. But when poor and middle peasants are told that the improvement of farming and the cheapening of plows will help them all get out of need and get back on their feet without touching the rich people at all—this is deception. From all these improvements, price reductions, and cooperatives (associations for the sale and purchase of goods), the rich gain far more. The rich become ever stronger, ever more harass both the poor and the middle peasants. So long as the rich remain rich, so long as they hold in their hands the greater part of both the land, the livestock, the implements, and the money—until then not only the poor, but the middle peasants too will never get out of need. One or another middle peasant may worm his way into the ranks of the rich with the help of these improvements and cooperatives, but all the people and all the middle peasants will sink still deeper into need. In order for all middle peasants to worm their way into wealth, it is necessary to remove the rich themselves, and only the alliance of urban workers with rural poor can remove them.

The bourgeoisie says to the middle (and even the petty) peasant: we will sell you cheap land, cheap plows, and you sell us your soul—in exchange you renounce the struggle against all the rich.

The worker and social-democrat says: if they really are selling cheaply, then why not buy when you have the money—it's a matter of commerce. But you should never sell your soul. To renounce the struggle together with the urban worker against all the bourgeoisie—this means to remain forever in destitution and need. From the cheapening of goods the rich will gain even more, will pile up even greater wealth. But for someone who never has money in a factory, no bargains will help so long as he does not take that money away from the bourgeoisie.

Let us take an example. The supporters of the bourgeoisie make much ado about all manner of cooperatives (associations for cheap purchasing and profitable selling). There are even people who call themselves "socialist-revolutionaries" and who likewise cry out, following the bourgeoisie, that cooperatives are what the peasant needs most of all. They begin to establish all sorts of cooperatives here in Russia too, but we still have very few of them, and there will be few so long as there is no political freedom. But in Germany there are very many all sorts of cooperatives among the peasants. And look at who these cooperatives help most of all. In all of Germany, 140,000 rural proprietors participate in associations for the sale of milk and milk products, and these 140,000 proprietors have (we take round figures again, for simplicity) 1,100,000 cows. Poor peasants in all of Germany are counted at four million. Of these, only 40,000 participate in associations: that means out of every hundred poor peasants, only one makes use of these cooperatives. These 40,000 poor peasants have only 100,000 cows in total. Further, middle proprietors, middle peasants—one million; of these, 50,000 participate in a cooperative (that means five out of every hundred), and they have 200,000 cows. Finally, rich proprietors (that is, both landlords and rich peasants together)—one-third of a million; of these, 50,000 participate in a cooperative (that means seventeen out of every hundred!), and they have 800,000 cows!

This is who cooperatives help first and foremost and most of all. This is how people lead the peasant around by the nose, people who cry out about the salvation of the middle peasant through all manner of such associations for cheap purchasing and profitable selling. The bourgeoisie wants to "buy off" the peasant from the social-democrats very cheaply indeed, those social-democrats who call both the poor and the middle peasant to their side.

Here too we have all sorts of cheese-making artels and combined dairies. Here too there are as many people as you like who cry out: artels, and the communal association, and partnerships—that is what the peasant needs. But look at who these artels, partnerships, and communal leases work to the advantage of. Here, out of every hundred households at least twenty have no cows at all; thirty have one cow each: these sell milk out of desperate need, their children go without milk, starve, and die like flies. The rich peasants, on the other hand, have three, four, or more cows, and these rich peasants have half of all peasant cows. Who then do the cheese-making artels benefit? Clearly, first and foremost the landlords and the peasant bourgeoisie. Clearly, it is to their advantage for the middle peasants and the poor to follow them, for the means of salvation from need to be considered not the struggle of all workers against all the bourgeoisie, but the striving of individual proprietors to scramble out of their situation and worm their way into wealth.

This striving is encouraged and promoted in every way by all supporters of the bourgeoisie, disguising themselves as supporters and friends of the petty peasant. And many naive people do not recognize the wolf in sheep's clothing and repeat the bourgeois deception, thinking they are bringing benefit to the petty and middle peasant. For example, they argue in books and speeches that petty farming is most profitable, most lucrative, that petty farming thrives; therefore, they say, there are so many small proprietors in agriculture everywhere, therefore they cling so firmly to the land (and not because all the best lands are seized by the bourgeoisie, all the money is likewise in its hands, and the poor are harassed and worn out their whole lives on scraps of land!). The petty peasant does not need much money, these honeyed-tongued people say; the petty and middle peasant is more economical and industrious than the large proprietor and moreover knows how to live more simply: instead of buying hay for livestock, he gets by with straw; instead of buying an expensive machine, he gets up earlier and works longer and will catch up with the machine; instead of paying money to other people for every repair, he will take an axe on a holiday and do some carpentry himself—it will come out far cheaper than it does for the large proprietor; instead of feeding an expensive horse or ox, he will get by with a cow for plowing—among the Germans all poor peasants plow with cows, and here too our people are so impoverished that they have begun to plow not only with cows but with people! And how profitable! how cheap! How praiseworthy it is that the middle and petty peasant is so diligent, so hard-working, lives so simply, does not indulge in frivolity, does not think about socialism, but thinks only of his farm! Does not follow the workers who organize strikes against the bourgeoisie, but follows the rich, tries to become a respectable person! If only everyone were so diligent, so hard-working, lived so simply, did not drink, saved more money, spent less on all sorts of cotton prints, had fewer children, then everyone would live well and there would be no destitution and need!

Such honeyed speeches does the bourgeoisie sing to the middle peasant, and there are simple folk who believe these songs and repeat them themselves![37] In reality, these honeyed speeches are pure deception, pure mockery of the peasant. By cheap and profitable farming these honeyed-tongued people mean need, bitter need, which compels the middle and petty peasant to work from morning to night, to stint himself on every piece of bread, to refuse himself every kopeck of expenditure. Of course, what could be "cheaper" and more "profitable" than wearing one pair of trousers for three years, going barefoot in summer, tying the plow with rope, and feeding the cow rotten straw from the roof! Put any bourgeois or rich peasant on such "cheap" and "profitable" farming—you would soon see them forget their honeyed speeches!

People who praise petty farming sometimes want to bring benefit to the peasant, but in reality bring him only harm. With honeyed speeches they deceive the peasant just as a lottery deceives the people. Let me now explain what a lottery is. Suppose I have a cow worth 50 rubles. I want to raffle this cow in a lottery and I offer tickets to everyone at one ruble each. For one ruble the cow might fall to you! The people are tempted, and whole rubles come pouring in. When 100 rubles is collected, I conduct the raffle: whoever's ticket is drawn gets the cow for one ruble, and the rest go away with nothing. Has the cow come out "cheap" for the people? No, very dear, because double the price was paid, because two people (the one who ran the lottery and the one who got the cow) enriched themselves without any labor and moreover enriched themselves at the expense of ninety-nine people who lost their money. So whoever says that lotteries are profitable for the people is simply deceiving the people. In exactly the same way he deceives the peasants who promises them salvation from destitution and need by means of all manner of cooperatives (associations for profitable selling and cheap purchasing), all manner of improvements in farming, all manner of banks, and the like. As in a lottery one man won and the rest lost out, so here: one middle peasant managed to get into wealth, while ninety-nine of his comrades bent their backs their whole lives, never getting out of need and indeed growing poorer and poorer. Let every village dweller look carefully at his own community and at all his own district: how many middle peasants rise into wealth and forget need? And how many are there who cannot free themselves from need their whole lives? How many are there who are ruined and leave the villages? Throughout all of Russia, as we have seen, there are no more than two million middle peasant farms. Suppose that associations for cheap purchasing and profitable selling became ten times more numerous than now. What would this lead to? At most, if a hundred thousand middle peasants rose to the ranks of the rich. And what would this mean? It would mean: five out of every hundred middle peasants got rich. But the remaining ninety-five? For them it remains just as hard, and for many it has become far more difficult to live! And the poor have become even more impoverished!

For the bourgeoisie, it is obvious, all that is needed is for as many middle and petty peasants as possible to follow the rich, for them to believe in the possibility of freeing themselves from need without struggle against the bourgeoisie, for them to hope in their own diligence, in their own stinginess, in their own enrichment, and not in alliance with rural and urban workers. The bourgeoisie strives with all its might to support this deceptive belief and hope in the peasant, strives to lull him with all manner of honeyed speeches.

To expose the deception of all such honeyed-tongued people, it is enough to ask them three questions.

The first question. Can the working people free themselves from need and destitution when in Russia, out of two hundred and forty million desyatinas of arable land, one hundred million desyatinas belong to private landholders? When in the hands of sixteen thousand of the largest landholders is found sixty-five million desyatinas?

The second question. Can the working people free themselves from need and destitution when one and a half million rich peasant households (out of the total of ten million) have seized into their hands half of all peasant sowings, all peasant horses, all peasant livestock, and far more than half of all peasant stores and monetary savings? When this peasant bourgeoisie continues to grow richer and richer, oppressing the poor and the middle peasantry, enriching itself from the labor of farm hands and day laborers? When six and a half million peasant households are ruined poor, always hungry, earning a miserable piece of bread through all manner of hired labor?

The third question. Can the working people free themselves from need and destitution when money has become the principal force, when with money one can buy everything: a factory, land, and even hire people as workers, as wage slaves? When without money one can neither live nor conduct farming? When the petty proprietor, the poor man, must struggle with the large proprietor to earn money? When several thousand landlords, merchants, factory owners, and bankers have seized into their hands hundreds of millions of rubles and, moreover, control all the banks in which thousands of millions of rubles are collected?

There is no way to evade these questions with honeyed speeches about the advantages of petty farming or cooperatives. To these questions there can be but one answer: the real "cooperation" that can save the working people is the alliance of rural poor with urban workers and social-democrats for struggle against all the bourgeoisie. The sooner such an alliance expands and strengthens, the sooner the middle peasant will understand all the falseness of the bourgeois promises, the sooner the middle peasant will come over to our side.

The bourgeoisie knows this, and therefore, besides honeyed speeches, it spreads all manner of lies about the social-democrats. It says that the social-democrats want to take property away from the middle and petty peasant. This is a lie. The social-democrats want to take property only from the large proprietors, only from those who live by the labor of others. The social-democrats will never take property away from small and middle proprietors who do not hire workers. The social-democrats defend and uphold the interests of all the working people, not only urban workers, who are the most conscious and most united of all, but also rural workers, as well as small artisans and peasants, if they do not hire workers and do not follow the rich, do not go over to the side of the bourgeoisie. The social-democrats struggle for all improvements in the life of workers and peasants that can be undertaken right now, before we have destroyed the rule of the bourgeoisie, and which will facilitate this struggle against the bourgeoisie. But the social-democrats do not deceive the peasant; they tell him the whole truth; they straightforwardly and in advance tell him that no improvements can free the people from need and destitution so long as the bourgeoisie rules. So that all the people might know what social-democrats are and what they want, the social-democrats have drawn up their program.[38] A program means a short, clear, and precise statement of everything the party strives for and what it struggles for. The social-democratic party is the only party that puts forward a clear and precise program so that all the people may know and see it, so that in the party there might be only people who truly wish to struggle for the liberation from the oppression of the bourgeoisie of all the working people, and moreover people who understand correctly whom one must unite with for such a struggle and how one must conduct this struggle. Moreover, the social-democrats believe that one must explain directly, openly, and precisely in the program why need and destitution of the working people arise and why the alliance of workers grows ever wider and ever stronger. More than this—to say that things are bad and to call for rebellion—any loudmouth can do that, and there is little good in it. It is necessary that the working people clearly understand why they are suffering and with whom they must unite to struggle for liberation from need.

We have already said what the social-democrats want; we have said why need and destitution of the working people arise; we have said with whom the rural poor must struggle and whom they must unite with for such a struggle.

Now we will say what improvements we can fight for right now, improvements both in the life of workers and in the life of peasants.